Patrick Stotz, Der Spiegel, will speak about their 7 most satisfying Datawrapper workarounds

We’re excited to announce that Patrick Stotz from Der Spiegel will speak at our Unwrapped conference about “You can’t do that with Datawrapper! Are you sure? Our 7 most satisfying Datawrapper workarounds.”

Time to ask him some questions:

Patrick, can you please introduce yourself?

I’m working as a data journalist since 2015 and currently fill the position as co-lead of the data & visualization department at the German newsroom Der Spiegel. I have learned most of what I know about data visualization through knowledge exchange in the dataviz community or simply learning on the job. Datawrapper is my “Swiss Army knife” for all kinds of visualizations, from the most simple charts to automatic updates via API and the DatawRappr-Package.

What will you talk about?

At Der Spiegel, we use Datawrapper on a daily basis. We have made it a habit to always check first whether we can solve challenges in Datawrapper before building more complex self-programmed solutions. In this talk, I would like to share some of the most unusual hacks we have implemented while doing so.

How do you use Datawrapper (in your team)?

We use Datawrapper for a wide range of use cases in our team. It's our primary tool for quickly producing news graphics for our website spiegel.de, and we use it for all of the standard visualizations for our weekly print magazine.

We also use Datawrapper to create highly customized charts and maps for larger stories, keep lots of dynamic charts updated with data via the API, and use it for quick prototyping and data exploration.

What's your guiding principle when working on data visualizations?

Always ask you self if the chart you are producing is transporting exactly what you want to express. Does it emphasize the most important information? Is it easily understandable? Would additional annotation help? And: Is it well embedded into your article?

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We're looking forward to Patrick's talk at Unwrapped! Until then, you can find more about him on Bluesky, Mastodon, and LinkedIn. To sign up for Unwrapped and hear Patrick and other great speakers, visit our conference website.